Category: My stories

Some Assembly Required

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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
No, it’s not because of the stockings hung with care or the tree trimmed to perfection.
It’s because the floor is covered with bicycle parts of various sizes, shapes, and sharpnesses.
Which end is up? Which end is down?
Then there’s the Salvador Dali-esque ambiguity of the parts. Take, for instance, this thing: it’s either a fuser or a gearshift.
I still think they got packed with a photocopier’s manual.
Oh well. I’ll just put it together, sit on it, and we’ll see if I roll or make copies of my butt.

Knit Wit

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Halfway to Mars, communications stopped working.
Commander Gregg had plenty of supplies, a library of movies and books, and all of the yarn he needed to keep his hands occupied.
At first, he thought he’d make a cap. Then, he knitted up a scarf.
The sweater was finished as the retrorockets fired, slowing down the lander’s descent to the Martian surface.
Gregg tried one last time to call Houston, but he’d forgotten about the communications delay.
Sixteen minutes later, Mission Control screamed in futility for Gregg to take off the cap and put on his helmet before cycling the airlock.

Schwein in einem Beutel

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Gerhard looked around the auction house to see if anyone would outbid him.
Once… twice… sold!
He remembered scaling The Wall and running through No Man’s Land to freedom forty years ago to seek his fortune.
He wondered if this section was the exact one he leapt over all those years ago.
Did it matter?
It was when the truck unloaded his prize and he saw the aluminum coathooks and permanent marker scribblings that he realized his mistake: he’d been bidding on the Wall from Berlin’s, a recently-demolished nightclub in SoHo, as opposed to a piece of the Berlin Wall.

This is the dawning of the Age Of Doug

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Zeus chewed on his mashed potatoes in the Old Gods Home and groaned.
“Mashed potatoes?” said Zeus. “In the old days, I drank Ambrosia and hurled thunderbolts!”
Zeus reached into his Depends, pulled out some lightning, and weakly hefted it over his shoulder.
He wobbled and stabbed an orderly in the chest, mortally wounding him.
“Doug,” said Zeus, sputtering mashed potatoes. “I’m so sorry. I just wanted…”
Doug wheezed and gasped, slowly dying.
“I’ll place you in the heavens,” wept Zeus. “Forever with the stars.”
The Old Gods Home posted an ad for Doug’s replacement: “Good pay, great retirement benefits.”

The Wacky Adventures of Abraham Lincoln 61

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Hannibal Hamlin and Andrew Johnson faced each other across the mud puddle.
“Can’t you just flip a coin?” asked Hannibal of his soon-to-be former boss.
Abraham shook his weary head. “The Treasury has none to spare,” he said. “Every last penny has gone towards the war effort.”
The crowd surrounding the mud pit taunted Hamlin.
“Coward!”
“Tiebreaking fool!”
“Knave!”
“Weakling!”
Hannibal Hamlin rolled up his sleeves and picked up the rope. So did Johnson.
Half an hour later, the men remained on either side of the mud puddle.
“You’re tugging the rope, right?” asked Lincoln.
Hamlin and Johnson laughed together.

Pee Wee’s Hellhouse

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Pee Wee Herman always said “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
Decades past his prime, Paul Reubens looked in the mirror and agreed.
Behind him, talons clacked on the coffee table. “So, Reubens,” said the Devil. “Do you agree to my terms?”
The contract was signed, and his youth was restored.
“Now I can finally stage my comeback! HAH!” shouted Paul, prancing happily in a circle. “Wait – what do you get out of this, Satan?”
“I can think of no worse torment for humanity than you on the airwaves,” said Satan.
And then he headed for Pauly Shore’s home.

Laundry Thieves

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I had a box of detergent, a hike from my dorm room to the laundry center, and not enough sense to get a smaller, lighter container for carrying the stuff.
But whenever I left the box in there, half of it would mysteriously vanish.
Damn thieves.
So I added instant mashed potato flakes to the detergent and left it in the laundry room.
Hours later, everybody in there’s yelling obscenities.
The room smells like potatoes. Gloppy clothes everywhere.
“Be grateful,” I said, taking my clothes out of the dryer. “In Saudi Arabia, they cut thieves’ hands off.”
I never did have to resort to the gravy mix.

Coaster Fu

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Trevor McTavish can hit anybody in the pub with a coaster.
With one flick of his wrist, you’re tagged.
The drunker he is, the sharper the coaster’s edge.
Are you in hiding in the toilet? Think he can’t hook it through the door and around the wall?
Go ahead. Say something nasty about his mother. I dare you.
Some say he learned this skill from a monastery of coaster-tossing acolytes. Others say military scientists gave him telekenetic powers.
Only Trevor McTavish and I know the truth, and I’m not telling.
No. Really. I don’t want to lose my other eye.

The Iron Baby

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The Iron Baby was a real baby that legend says turned to iron when his witch-mother burned at the stake.
A curse is upon us: ignore or abandon this shrieking monster, and the town will be destroyed.
Each family takes care of the monster for one night, passing it along Harvest Road to the next family when dawn breaks.
Turkel the Blacksmith’s family was next. He’d had enough, so he hammered a horseshoe into a pacifier.
The shrieking… stopped.
As the people prepared a feast to celebrate, the woods caught fire.
Strange winds pushed the flames towards the town square.

Mother? Mother?

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Mother really likes to play Scrabble.
We’ve played for thirty years now. Whenever I come back home, that Scrabble board is out and ready.
So when she went into the hospital for surgery, sure enough, that Scrabble board was there on the rolling table right next to all the food cups with straws in them.
We play for a bit, and I notice she’s occasionally pushing a black button.
“It’s for the morphine,” she says.
I hold her hand, click the button a few times, and she gets way-out loopy.
Maybe now she’s fully whacked out, I’ll win.
Mother?
Mother?